[HN Gopher] The Babel Routing Protocol ___________________________________________________________________ The Babel Routing Protocol Author : simonpure Score : 31 points Date : 2020-12-21 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (tools.ietf.org) (TXT) w3m dump (tools.ietf.org) | motohagiography wrote: | In the security considerations, it appears to recommend using | external application security controls for it: | | https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-babel-rfc6126bis-20#s... | | To me, that seems like an attractive nuisance, where it's likely | something that's really easy to implement and operate, and then | build things that rely on it that are more valuable to where the | idea it's strung together with something as lightweight as Babel | becomes insanely irresponsible. Kind of like its predecessor | RIPv1. The idea of publishing or implementing a new routing | protocol that doesn't have cryptographic verification designed | into it as a feature seems like sabotage. | | My day to day is dealing with the consequences of devops teams | launching low-security infrastructure and then clients wanting to | migrate their high-sensitivity data to it, and this Babel spec is | precisely the kind of thing that causes that conflict. | | Sure, build something untrusted that forces people to implement | their own security that is at a level sufficient for themselves. | I understand that as a reasonable design principle, but perhaps I | have been out of the game too long, as seeing how these things | play out, it's not clear how a routing protocol without at least | signed updates is a good idea. | machello13 wrote: | Can someone explain what an application of this might be? | detaro wrote: | AFAIK a main goal is a routing protocol that handles mesh | networks well. | nisa wrote: | it's used for mesh networks (but can also be used for other | applications) - some freifunk communities in germany use it and | there is ongoing development to port the most popular mesh | firmware called gluon to use babel as it's a layer3 mesh and | gluon is using a layer2 mesh (using B.A.T.M.A.N) - layer3 | scales better because with more nodes you have a noisy switch | on layer2. | | Fascinating stuff - if you want to learn more about babel here | is a technical talk from the developer: | https://www.battlemesh.org/BattleMeshV8/Agenda?action=Attach... | _nhynes wrote: | The intro suggests that it's for "unstable networks." The | protocol is required by the HomeNet project [0, 1], so | residential networking (possibly including IoT) seems to be one | application. | | [0]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/homenet/about/ | | [1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-homenet-babel- | pr... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-12-21 23:01 UTC)